


For Her

by ABigAmarone



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: #Holidays2020, Childhood, Christmas, Fluff, For an Amino challenge, Gen, Hannibal and Mischa fluff, Hannibal's Christmas memory, Lithuania - Freeform, Sociopath in the making, There's something wrong about Hannibal Lecter, animal cruelty, no beta we die like men, non-graphic animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28439037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABigAmarone/pseuds/ABigAmarone
Summary: Set during one of Hannibal's childhood Christmas memories. Hannibal dotes on Mischa, but he carries a darkness inside. During this last perfect Christmas of theirs as a family, an incident at the pond makes Hannibal question his moral priorities. Filled with fluff, but the edges are shrouded in shadow. Written for the Hannibal Amino #Holidays2020 prompt, "Memories of Holidays Past".
Kudos: 1





	For Her

It was cold that day, the kind of cold that seeped into the corners of the house and curled up the side of their beds, ready to steal into their lungs with the first-morning breath. Back then, Hannibal had his own bedroom, of course, one of the many in the Lecter mansion, but from time to time he would entertain the whims of his precious, nightmare-prone little sister and allow her to sleep with him. On this day, in particular, Hannibal woke to the sound of light snoring beside him. He shifted and turned to look bleary-eyed at Mischa lying beside him, her pouty mouth open as she slept on. He sighed quietly to himself and closed his eyes again, ready to drift back off. It was still early after all, going by the sparse amount of light that was drifting into the room through the French windows which led out to the balcony. One of the staff, or perhaps their mother, would come to wake them once it was time for breakfast. 

However, right before he slipped fully into the deep velvety black depth of sleep, Hannibal suddenly recalled what day it was. His eyes snapped open, and he lay very still, deciding. It did not take long to come to a decision, and he sat up against the pillows before leaning over with his short arms to gently shove Mischa awake. "Mischa, Mischa, wake. It is Christmas!" Before his little sister could respond, or even fully wake, Hannibal was already out of bed, putting on his slippers and a cotton robe to protect him against the chill the blankets had been saving him from. Turning back to the bed, Hannibal saw Mischa half-propped on an arm, rubbing at her eyes and face in confusion. "'Anniba?"

Hannibal gave her a full smile. "Yes, Mischa -- Christmas! Let us go wake Father and Mother." She still stared at him, nonplussed, so he tried again. "We can open the presents that Father Christmas has left us in the night. Oh, how I do hope that I received the graphite I wanted -- as well as the illustrated _Elements_ by Euclid I asked for." As he spoke, Hannibal went around the bed to the little girl's side and picked up the pink slippers on the cherry wood floor. Mischa obediently swung her legs over the edge of the bed and allowed her big brother to slide the slippers on, but when Hannibal looked up into her face, he only saw doubt there, rather than the excitement he expected. " _Toys_ , Mischa. I'm certain that Father Christmas has left you a mountain of toys. You have been quite good this year after all." That seemed to do the trick, and Hannibal watched the girl's face light up like the Christmas trees the servants had set up around the manor at the beginning of the month. Mischa's mouth broke into a wide smile that crinkled her eyes nearly shut and reddened her already perpetually pink cheeks. "Toys! Toys!" She exclaimed with glee, clapping her hands. Hannibal smiled indulgently and then lifted her into his arms to set her on the floor before taking one of her little hands in his. "Yes, now come -- we have to get Mother and Father first. They must have their toys as well now, don't they?"

Later, after quite a rousing wake up that involved Mischa jumping onto their sleeping parents' bed and screaming for toys, they all sat in their large sitting room where the main Christmas tree was, with its plethora of brightly wrapped presents underneath it. The fireplace had been turned on, and the two heads of the Lecter household sat in armchairs, sipping coffee and smiling as they watched their children attack the presents. The staff were already up at this hour, preparing breakfast and maintaining the house as was appropriate for a manor this size. One of the kitchen staff had heard the noise and come in to give Mr. and Mrs. Lecter their coffee and had also given Hannibal and Mischa mugs of warm, sweet apple cider. The latter remained largely ignored, however, as the children focused on their gifts.

"Oh, my," Hannibal gasped softly as he unwrapped his first present. It was a set of graphite pencils, of varying degrees from 5H all the way to 9B, and he immediately loved them. "Thank you very much," he said politely to his parents, the smile on his face small but very genuine. Hannibal caught Mischa stopping and glancing at him with some confusion, perhaps suspicion, and he hurried to correct his blunder. "Oh, it was Mother and Father who delivered our wants to Father Christmas, so we should thank them as well," he lied convincingly. Mischa made a hum and looked up at their parents from where she sat sprawled on the floor. "Thank you!" Count Lecter chuckled. "Of course, my dear." Their mother merely smiled and took a sip of coffee. She was pleased with how invested her son was in keeping Mischa under the belief that Father Christmas was real; he was the primary one who had spent long drives into town making up adventurous tales about the jolly man to tell her. To be truthful, when the youngest Lecter has been born, she had been mildly worried that Hannibal would be jealous of their attention, and that had seemed the case at first. However, soon the two children seemed to form an unbreakable attachment to each other, and she knew that Hannibal loved his sister fiercely and fondly. "Why don't you take your sister to the pond after opening your presents, dear? You can test out your pencils by drawing the ducks", she told her son and watched as he considered the suggestion. "I believe I will," Hannibal responded with a small nod. He then turned to help Mischa unwrap her presents, as she was having trouble with her clumsy fingers.

It took a while for them to open all of the presents, and then to sit down and have breakfast and to get dressed, but eventually, Hannibal and Mischa were on their way down to the large pond which was located on the eastern grounds. Clutched beneath one of Hannibal's arms were a sketchbook and the metal tin of sketching pencils he had just been gifted. He rather wished he could have been alone, for while he did at times enjoy Mischa's company when they went down to the pond alone he had to have a constant watch over her, lest she wade into the water and drown. He wouldn't be able to get lost in his sketching, but he should be able to accomplish a drawing or two while entertaining his sister.

They made it to the pond, and Hannibal was careful where he stepped as the ground became softer and certain areas gave way to slippery mud. Mischa on the other hand ran to the water’s edge with abandon, splashing into the edge of the water where she stopped, ankle-deep. Hannibal sighed quietly to himself. When they made it back to the manor and were dried off by the servants, he’d likely get a light scolding for allowing his sister to get wet.

“Goose! Goose!”, shrieked Mischa, as she waved at the ducks that circled the surface of the pond, several feet from the edge. Hannibal stepped up behind her.

“Ducks, Mischa”, he corrected for the millionth time, but she ignored him. For some reason, she often referred to the ducks as geese and no amount of correcting swayed her. It was simultaneously annoying, and a cute idiosyncrasy. Mischa turned and grinned up at him, before facing forward again and bending to dip her hands into the water, sorting through the pebbles there, no doubt trying to pick out the prettiest of the lot. Hannibal watched her for a moment, and only then realized that she was without a jacket or scarf, and only sported a relatively thin woolen sweater. She must be slightly chilled but did not seem to mind it. Hannibal didn’t know how she did it; he despised the cold. He always had, since he could remember. This was ironic, as he had heard the servants saying that he had a frozen heart. Not to his face of course; they would lose their jobs for such a thing. No, he had heard some of them whispering to each other, about his ‘farfroyrn harts”, his oddly mature and detached demeanor. It didn’t bother him, merely made him curious as to how he was supposed to act and feel. They were homeschooled, so he wouldn’t know, but sometimes Hannibal could just feel it in his bones: that he was not normal…

Shaking such thoughts from his head, deeming them silly, Hannibal clutched his jacket tighter against himself and went to sit by the tree a few feet away. He opened his sketchbook to a fresh page, ran a hand across the creamy surface of it, and got to work sketching. He had gone through three drawings (one of the landscape, one of the ducks on the pond, and one of Mischa) before he was distracted by his name being called. He looked up and saw Mischa pouting at him. “Yes, Mischa?” he asked. Her pout merely intensified, and she looked down, running a pebble through her fingers before chucking it into the pond. Hannibal watched her, mystified by the odd motion of her arm as if she were trying to wiggle it like a snake on the throw. Quickly, though, it clicked for him: she was trying to skip rocks, as she had doubtless seen him and father do. He went to go help her of course, because that is what big brothers are for. Protecting their little sisters, and lovingly teaching them to skip rocks. They passed the time doing this for a while, and Mischa eventually got the hang of it. Their little game evolved into trying to throw the rocks farther and farther and then to trying to hit the dead tree that stuck up from the middle of the pond like a sore, amputated thumb. Hannibal was quickly growing bored, however, as he was rather good at this game, at the aiming, and Mischa…well, she wasn’t. He just wanted to go back to his drawing. His eyes wandered, eventually catching the movement of the ducks on the pond, which never swam near enough to be within reach of the humans who sometimes visited their waters. A thought popped into his head, sudden and cruel and childish. “Look, Mischa! I bet I can reach that duckling over there!” Hannibal said, referring to a small white and brown duckling that was circling the tree. And with that, he threw the rock, chucking it into the lake.

On its descent, as planned, it fell atop the head of the little duckling, crushing its skull and snapping the delicate neck, immediately killing it. The rock and animal sunk beneath the disturbed waves and Hannibal watched without expression, unmoved by his own actions. He stared at the water where the duckling previously was and idly wondered if he was supposed to feel something, something more than this…peace. His thoughts were interrupted, however, by the sound of crying coming from beside him. He turned his head and looked down to his side, where little Mischa was actively bawling, her face red as she rubbed at her eyes with a tiny fist. "W-Why? 'Anniba?" There was such heartbreak, such innocence and betrayal in that voice, that for a moment, just a moment, Hannibal felt the ice around his heart crack, and he felt bad for what he had done. Kneeling into the wet grass, and no doubt wetting his trousers, he gazed into the screwed up face of his sister and apologized. "Mischa, do not cry, I...I cannot undo what I have done, but I will not do it again." Hannibal reached out and grasped Mischa's hands which were holding her face. He gently pulled them away and took the opportunity to wipe a few tears away from her honey eyes, which were so like their mother's. "I promise, yes? I will not do it again. And I vow to you now, Mischa, that I will always keep my promises to you." Hannibal pressed a light kiss to her forehead then and drew her into an embrace. There was still a peculiar feeling in his chest, like there was something crumbling inside of him, as he listened to the hiccups of his little sister while she pressed her face into his chest.

Eventually, the girl's crying slowed, and Hannibal pulled back to look at her. "Feeling better?" Slowly, Mischa nodded shyly, as though embarrassed for her crying spell. Hannibal saw her glance at the pond beside them, at the ducks that still swam back and forth across it, and there was that guilt again, as uncomfortable as it was unfamiliar. "Come," Hannibal said quickly, "let us go and see if lunch has been prepared yet. And if not, perhaps we can have a snack. How do biscuits and hot chocolate milk sound?" Mischa's face immediately brightened, and she nodded enthusiastically. "Yes!" Hannibal smiled, and at that moment he felt more like a big brother than at any time before. Protective, loving, fond of this tiny being in his arms who clung to him so trustingly like a climbing plant clings to a tree or the stones of a house. "Very well." They separated, and Hannibal collected his drawing materials under one arm and held Mischa's hand with the other hand. They started off toward the house, and their small feet crunched through the vibrant green grass, and the sun shone prettily off of everything, and dragonflies came to fly around them and visit on their walk. All was well and nearly perfect on this last normal Christmas of theirs, though at the time the children did not know that this would be their last Christmas with their family, before the invasion and the killings, before the cold and the constant hunger. For now, all was well. Halfway to the manor, Hannibal looked down at Mischa just as a dragonfly came to perch atop her head. He smiled at the sight, and in that moment he thought about the little duckling he had killed, how it had felt, but also the look upon Mischa's face; and he quietly promised himself that he would work to push down the darkness inside that he sometimes felt creep up in him. For her. Everything, for her.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed my first work! I just find Hannibal's fixation on his passed away sister to be so fascinating, so I wanted to focus on how I imagine their dynamic was. I feel that if Hannibal had grown up normally, he probably would have displayed sociopathic and narcissistic traits, and perhaps would have become a serial killer anyway (just maybe not a cannibal). Hence the animal cruelty as a child, which is one of the signs that serial killers display. Yet despite that, I like to think that Mischa, if she were to have lived, would have been a tether to his empathy. One can only wonder...and write fanfiction. Leave a kudos and a comment, and I wish everyone a happy new year.


End file.
